


Reunion

by WhirlwindWriter



Series: Happily Ever After Ending AU [1]
Category: The Property of Hate
Genre: DadGB, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Happy Ever After AU, Human Time, Light Angst, Modern AU? Technically?, Nobody is Dead, but fuck it, my writing is weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 18:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17268914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhirlwindWriter/pseuds/WhirlwindWriter
Summary: "Excuse me? I say, excuse me? I'm sorry but, have you seen my Hero?"First thing I've written for the After Ending AU





	Reunion

Hero isn’t crazy. She knows she’s not crazy. No matter what the grown ups say, no matter how many times they tell her she has ‘Such an imagination’ Hero knows that she’s not crazy. The things she did, the people she met, the places and creatures she saw in that colourful world beyond the cloud, those memories are too vivid to be a dream. They’re real, she knows they’re real, and he  _ promised _ he’d see her again. He’d promised to come back to her. And damn it if she didn’t know that idiotbox couldn’t keep a promise to save his life, but she had to keep believing he’d keep the one he’d made to her. Because if she didn’t…

She doesn’t know what she  _ would _ believe.

The family she’s staying with is kind enough. Though the adults are busy as adults tend to be, and the two older children ignore her almost entirely, she’s made friends with the younger members of her foster family, Lily and Jamie and little baby Lucien, who always listen to her stories, and hang onto her every word. It’s nice to be believed, even if only by those younger than her.

But six children and two grown ups and a sweet but slow old dog makes the house crowded and noisy until the very latest hours of night. So she’d convinced her foster parents to trust her just enough that as long as she was home before sundown and got all her homework done, she could spend the time after she got out of class for the day doing as she liked. Which usually means spending the day outside at the park, or wandering streets full of small, colourful shops. 

And even if it’s a lot of filling time waiting for something she doesn’t even know will happen, Hero has fun! She helps shop owners with chores they need done, talks to people doing chalk drawings in the park, and entertains herself by hunting for bugs and lost treasures, or climbing the big old tree on the hill in the park and just laying in its branches until it’s time to leave. It’s not bad, just… well a bit boring.

Until about a month ago. A month ago after she’d  _ finally  _ turned nine, things had started to catch her attention. Little things, inconsequential things,  _ entirely irrelevant things _ , to literally anyone else. But she sees them, she notices them, and she  _ swears _ the world is just making fun of her now. 

Because surely, the ‘Tinker Tailor Design Company’ that everyone, even the kids in school, is talking about is just a clever name someone came up with. And that voice on the radio that she keeps barely catching when the show ends as she gets out of class, surely there’s other people with that exaggerated of a southern accent. Who’s to say why suddenly there are stuffed animals that look like Ideas and Lies and dolls that look like the denizens of the Market? Not her! It must be a coincidence! And the new talk show host who’s always in the news? She knows that voice, that smile, those god awful tacky suits, but it  _ can’t  _ be him. Because if it were he’d have held up his promise by now.

He’d have come to find her.

Today has been… particularly un-great, that stupid man on the television who is definitely  _ not _ her former guide announced something or the other, and it’s been all over the news, his face is everywhere, and interview clips she doesn’t even bother watching keep getting played. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that she should have to see some random actor and  feel like the universe is making fun of her, because she hasn’t done anything that should be made fun of! She isn’t crazy, and all these things that are driving her crazy are just stupid jokes and mean coincidences, nothing else! 

After school Hero  runs right through the park, up the hill, and clambers up into the tree, like she’s being chased by fears. And hidden by the leafy branches, and protected from whatever awful joke the world wants to play on her next, Hero cries. She cries for a good long time about a great many things. She cries about the adults who never listen, and the way kids her age think she’s a lunatic, about the stupid little coincidences that shouldn’t bother her as much as they do, and how long she’s spent waiting. But it’s mostly the waiting she cries about. Heroes get happily ever afters once they’ve saved the world. She’d saved the world, and been promised a happily ever after! Left her new family, and came home to find she’d lost her old one. Spent 7 months in the foster system, with families who were kind but weren’t  _ hers. _   


Hero cries with bitterness over how unfair it is. He’d promised it wasn’t goodbye, that he’d see her again soon. So  _ where was he? _ Where were all of them? All the people who understood and promised to come back for her. She doesn’t know, and she cries. She doesn’t know how long she cries either, but when she’s done, she just sits there in her tree, watching the open sky through the branches.

“Excuse me?” She jumps at the sound of a voice, a familiar voice, below her at the bottom of the tree. “I say, excuse me?”

Hero looks down, and there is a man standing below her tree. A rather short man, with blonde hair, a bright smile, and a colourful suit. She says nothing, only stares.  _ It can’t be. _

His smile becomes something more genuine when he sees her face, “I’m sorry, but have you seen my Hero?”  _ It is. _ She’s so stunned, so completely overwhelmed with disbelief that she falls out of the tree, and for a moment, she’s terrified that he’s finally come back for her only for her to die before she can yell at him for taking so long! But he catches her, and holds on like he’s scared of the very same thing. Hero can’t tell if she’s crying or laughing as she throws her arms around her Guide, her Monster, her  _ friend’s  _ neck, and he’s doing a fair bit of both. But eventually they both calm down. He sets her gently on the ground and she refuses to let go of his hand, otherwise he might run away again.

“You came for me!”

“I did make a promise, did I not?”

“Your promises aren’t worth anything.”

He chuckles as they begin to walk out of the park, “You may be right about that.”

“What  _ took _ you so long?”

“Now  _ that _ is something I can’t wait to show you.”


End file.
